


Hands

by EnchanteRhea



Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 01:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnchanteRhea/pseuds/EnchanteRhea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, that stranger is no better than his prison, no different from the clouds of darkness gathering above his head. But Tsuzuki's hands are white, new and fresh and, for the first time in centuries, Touda remembers the meaning of right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Written on June 14th, 2007 for Amanda's prompt: "something with shikigami".

**Hands**   
by Rhea

 

Touda dreams in shades of gray: murky and thick like the air in his old prison. Colors were absent from his world for so long he is not sure his true self deep within still remembers them. He remembers the cold, ubiquitous darkness, futile anger, despair. Those things, though colorless, are hard to forget.   
  
Tsuzuki's hands are white and soft and so completely alien when they reach for him, in bittersweet reality and now - dream after dream. Touda counts them still – three hundred and eleven days, and just as many nights when nightmares toss him back in time and he, now a breathless observer, relives the hell of his imprisonment.   
  
And the thrill of his release that came just before he went insane.   
  
Dream-eyes follow dream-hands, white as marble that feels tender, and something tells him they won't break as easily as everything around him did. This stranger's brightness blinds him, heart of stone and frozen soul. They touch – the light becomes white hot, the distance between them disappearing into the space between their joined palms.   
  
He is saved. Again. Alien light is no better than well-known clouds of darkness gathering above his head, but it is new and fresh and, for the first time in centuries, Touda remembers the meaning of *right*.   
  
So he sleeps lightly now, even after three hundred and eleven days of this strange new life have passed and he has mostly calmed down. He dreams old nightmares on the verge of wakefulness, always ready to answer his master's call.   
  
His master. Not a master, imaginary Tsuzuki reminds him from behind the thinning veil of dream surrounding him. A friend. Tsuzuki is both fragile and strong, careful and unafraid – a walking contradiction with a pair of white, slender hands that have the power to change *everything*.   
  
Touda doesn't miss freedom from duty, his own power raging in his veins – now tamed – his hair, his old self. He doesn't miss them at all. There's nothing to think back to in the dusty, blemished book of his past.   
  
"What would you do," Tsuzuki asks him when Touda stirs awake, long blades of grass tickling the back of his neck, sunshine and Tsuzuki's warm breath on his face. "What would you do if the unthinkable ever happened, and you had to go back to your prison again?"   
  
Touda blinks, brow creasing, air locked in his lungs lest he start to shake, lest he make a sound that would give away the sudden stroke of pain. He'd rather keep pretending it isn't there, but his eyes stray from Tsuzuki's face.   
  
He doesn't know why the Shinigami has asked that question, now of all times. It is the first time since *that day* the subject has breached the surface of their still brittle bond.   
  
Tsuzuki stares, apologetic already though speechless still, wide-eyed in the wake of his own words.  
  
"Well," Touda says, as lightly as he can, heaving himself up from the ground. He turns slightly away. Tsuzuki will never see his tears.   
  
"I'd try to break free, of course."   
  
He knows too well the kind of silence that falls when his voice fades, filled with questions tumbling wordlessly from quivering lips behind him. Touda runs his hand down his arm, slowly, scratches at an itch that isn't there, adjusts his visor with his other hand.   
  
"But—" hesitation swallows Tsuzuki's failed attempts at a casual tone. "Wouldn't that be impossible?"   
  
He smiles, not entirely against himself. "Obviously, yes."   
  
"Then how?"  
  
His composure is intact and serving him well again by the time Touda turns, steady and sure and strong.   
  
"Quite simply," he says. "You'd call, I'd come."


End file.
